Nearly three centuries before Lewis and Clark's epic trek to the Pacific Coast, a shipwrecked African slave named Esteban Dorantes became the first great explorer and adventurer in what would become the American South. Esteban guided a small band of survivors on a remarkable eight-year odyssey westward—enduring famine, disease, and attacks by various Native Americans across what is now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, traveling as far as Mexico City and the Gulf of California. He eventually found a place as accepted as a shaman and healer. Robert Goodwin gives us Esteban's history, compares contemporary histories by Cabeza de Vaca and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, and recounts his own intriguing search for the scant historical records.